


make room at the bottom of the sea

by swordboys



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: (not written as suicide but circumstances may be close enough to be triggering, Angst, Ben Hargreeves-centric, Body Horror, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, During Canon, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mild Gore, Non-Linear Narrative, Vomiting, imaginings of ben's childhood and backstory that are mostly, so tagging to be safe)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:40:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27041398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swordboys/pseuds/swordboys
Summary: "The kindest of my siblings, but he was so eager to please Father. He was easily manipulated, dragged into Father and Luther’s little games—and those two simply let him die."All in all, a succinct two-sentence summation of his sixteen years. A version of the truth in her words, except—except that "those two simply let him”—Ben Hargreeves—"die."Instinctively, something about that feels wrong..(on endings, personal and apocalyptic. things fall apart. the center cannot hold.)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 31





	make room at the bottom of the sea

**Author's Note:**

> oh ben. my sweet ben. come here.
> 
> rated for what I personally would not _strictly_ categorize as suicide, but as stated in the tags, it is possibly close enough to maybe be triggering so i've tagged to be safe. please feel free to let me know if you think otherwise, or have other tagging concerns! the fic also selectively borrows a very tiny bit from comic lore here and there, mostly just to fill in one or two gaps.

_man, i hate this part of texas.  
close my eyes, fantasize:  
three clicks and i'm home._

* * *

Ben has always been afraid of being alone.

That's probably why even before he ended up haunting his brother full-time, he had begged Pogo and Mom to convince Hargreeves to let him share a room with Klaus. Both of them afraid of the dark, both of them young and small and curled up under layers and layers of blankets that could not hope to protect either of them from the spectral and eldritch horrors looming over, or inside them.

What the blankets couldn't do, they tried to do for each other. But nonetheless, at age sixteen, Ben is dead, and even _he_ has barely any idea of how it happened.

Is that part of death—the forgetting?

He thinks the answer is "yes." So far, it's all been forgetting: of the joys and of the pains, the forgetting of himself and being forgotten by others.

And yet he can't forget them, his family, at all. Ben thumbs at the zippers of his jacket pockets absently, takes another step. He misses them, terribly, and it is the one ache that anchors him and has yet to dull.

But he's home now. He descends the final stair, departing from the empty chairs and rooms above, to the basement he never knew.

"Vanya."

* * *

Vanya's words, written on the inside jacket of her tell-all memoir, _Extra-Ordinary: My Life as Number Seven_ :

_The kindest of my siblings, but he was so eager to please Father. He was easily manipulated, dragged into Father and Luther’s little games—and those two simply let him die._

His only eulogy, really. He had missed his own funeral since Klaus had waited until after to attempt summoning him, so Ben hadn't caught Hargreeves's little graveside speech; although by Klaus's summary, it had amounted to less of a memorial and more of a warning to his surviving siblings and a call to do better.

But, no surprise there. Vanya, though—the first time Ben reads her writing from over Klaus's shoulder, he can't help but feel a twinge of betrayal.

Eager to please? Easily manipulated? 

And of course, dead.

 _May the darkness within you find peace in the light_.

He grimaces. Just a particularly naïve—sorry, "kind"—pawn caught between two players, at times opposing and at times not. Or, mostly not. Useless until coaxed across the length of the chessboard to awaken the eight-limbed queen within.

He can't tell if her words are damning, or letting him off easy. Maybe both. But Vanya hadn't had to see his work firsthand.

All in all, a succinct two-sentence summation of his sixteen years. A version of the truth in her words, except—except that "those two simply let him”—Ben Hargreeves—"die."

Instinctively, something about that feels wrong.

* * *

The first time it happened, it had been by accident.

He had been hungry. Or, rather, he had first been sick, really sick, in the days before their training had started proper, the days before Grace. The days when he could say he wasn't hungry for lunch, and Father would look at him with disapproval and their caretaker would titter nervously around him as he clarified, it was because he was feeling ill, _excuse me_ , and he could shut himself in his room in uninterrupted, sweaty, fitful sleep until dinner.

At six o'clock, he is called to the table again. Next to his plate is a small medicine cup of dark red syrup, and he slumps into his seat across from Five, who wrinkles his nose but says nothing.

Father looks at him through his monocle, states something like, "Number Six, drink your medicine, and you shall be excused."

The words, "Yes, Father," immediately fall from his tongue.

He turns back to his plate, upon which a small pile of plain rice and some beans sit, presumably rendered soft and palatable for him and his diminished appetite. He pushes it around with a fork, and the way the beans fall apart, flesh torn from skin between the tines, makes his stomach lurch. A few mouthfuls of rice manage to make it down anyway before another wave of nausea crashes over him, and he drops his fork with a clatter, drawing a judgmental cluck from down the table. Shakily, he reaches for the medicine and drains it all in a single, painful swallow. He shudders at the taste.

Dismissed. His chair is pulled out by the caretaker, who pats his forehead dry with a napkin and whispers something soothing but unintelligible, props him up as he steps away from the dining table.

His stomach growls. There are the sounds of slightly stifled giggles, probably Number One or Two, maybe both. He would blush, except he is positive his whole face is already burning red anyway. Gingerly, he places a hand to his abdomen and—

it ripples.

He falls to his knees, palms on the floor and nausea redoubled and he's going to vomit, he's sure, he can see the caretaker's neatly polished flats take a step forward, then a half-step back, then two, three, panicked. And then he's heaving, heaving heave something is spilling out, inky black and oh, the smell—fishy, rotten, something dead and dying and something unspeakable and piercing like a shriek—he is being pushed upright by a writhing mass of intestine, dying, he thinks, the sensation of an icy chill creeping up his innards and he turns to his family, faces of abject horror as a raw and fleshy appendage starts to reach for the empty seat and rising from—

Pale yellow freckled with grains of eggshell white sprays from his mouth onto the floor and he collapses into it. Wet. His belly presses flat against cold tile.

There is screaming, maybe his; maybe the caretaker's, whose polished shoes are now nowhere in sight. The sound of someone else at the table losing their dinner as well. Father standing mute, looking down at him with a glint in his eye and just the slightest curl to his lip.

Training begins the day after.

* * *

Most days though, he would like to think that's all mostly of the "finished" kind of business, as far as his ghostly preoccupations go.

Then again, these days even his present is past. It's 1960, he and Klaus are in Dallas, Texas, and he's never been more glad to be invisible and incorporeal. And some days, he is only one of those things, thanks to Klaus—benefactor, barycenter, brother.

Today, he rests an elbow on Klaus's bony shoulder and keeps one patch of brightly colored synthetic fabric clean from the dust-laden gusts of wind. His weight presses down on Klaus, and he pretends gravity might actually be pulling him down to earth.

Today it is just him and Klaus against the world again, together. A spot he fills, a spot for him, and today that feels more hopeful than not. He trails Klaus as he walks out from under the shade of the diner and onto the street, passes a man whose clothes are more sand than cloth. The man stands with his sign: _THE END IS HERE._

* * *

Supposedly, Reginald had stepped off a plane in Seoul, and hopped from train to private car and back to find him. On arrival, however, his home had been empty; but Reginald had made calls and pulled strings for him, then had appeared at the orphanage to scoop him up just hours after Ben had been carted there himself. He had been handed over, tightly swaddled and about as cheerful as a month-old child could be.

This is the version of his adoption that he manages to beg from Grace, as she tucks him in good night. "Reggie said you were always such a quiet and well-behaved baby, Ben," she adds, and ruffles his hair fondly. Taps the tip of his nose for good measure, and he smiles before tucking his chin under his covers. "Never cried."

Once she flicks the lights out and closes the door behind her, Klaus whispers conspiratorially over to him, "I bet that's a lie."

Ben pretends not to hear, but his heart sinks in agreement.

* * *

They debuted as the Umbrella Academy at age thirteen, the mission: obstruct a simple bank robbery. And the wheels, the cogs of their little system hadn't been greased as well as they could have been, but at the time it had felt like jigsaw pieces falling into place.

At least, he hopes it must have felt that way for them all. Even Ben, reluctant as he had been, even though he technically hadn't had much of a choice—he can't deny that _something_ had kept him going for his three years in action. He had hated those missions, of course, but retrospect has now tinted everything warm gold with nostalgia for a time when he and his siblings had been less complicated to love; and when he thinks of them as a team, a family, a unit, the internal squabbles and life-or-death coin flips fade further from his mind.

He does not miss the training. Specifically the individual parts, at least: the afternoons of his Saturdays and Luther's Mondays and Diego's Tuesdays and Allison's Wednesdays and Klaus's Thursdays and Five's Fridays, and Sunday hours left to Hargreeves's whim.

It's obvious now: they should have supported each other better. He wishes that he had known of Vanya's imprisonment and erasure, that he had thought to ask about the ways in which the others had been drilled into the shapes of soldiers. Even Klaus, whose nights in the mausoleum had been the shared but unspoken secret between the two of them. Maybe things could have been different if they had known to protect each other, if they hadn't been just children. He wishes he hadn't thought just to be "kind," as if that could have saved him or anyone else.

There hadn't been much to share about his own training experience at first. He had still been weak, running a temperature and leaning against the wall as the words, "Again, Number Six," repeated over and over in his mind. He sits in fearful silence, and the hours pass agonizingly and quietly, without result.

But, as the days continue and his fever and other symptoms fade, he becomes aware that the something slithering just under his skin is here to stay. Some days it crawls; other days it oozes, thick and syrupy; and still other days it finds new ways to wake him up in the middle of the night in a slick sweat, ice-cold with dread. A rising nausea, the feeling that his body hosts something foreign, every itch and pinprick and goosebump a sign that something in him wants to get _out_.

He is afraid but curious if knowledge will protect him. When he startles awake, he lifts his hand to the window, as if the moon's soft glow would render his skin translucent, stares at the birthmarks that dot the spaces between his knuckles. The blue light and shadow outline tendon and bone and vein he traces down his arm and something b l i n k s in his brain. It's hard to describe, exactly, but there's a before and an after. He moves his fingertip left, and he's before; he moves his fingertip a little to the right, and there's after. The transition is effortless, the boundary definite.

Like the pendulum of a metronome, he draws a path back and forth across unmarked skin, chasing that mental click and flicker. He squints, rubs his eyes, squints again, but there is nothing visible that marks this "seam" he senses, he's not sure how, on his body. None of his five senses add up to the sensation that whispers, something, an indistinct signal that strengthens as he maps out the seams over consecutive sleepless nights, his blood pulsing in his ears, they lead towards his heart, down his sternum, he knows where it's going down to the heat of his stomach where the churning beneath the surface is strongest, where it tells him, _OPEN._

His hand freezes over his skin, oh so thin, like paper. Petrified, he fixes his gaze on the shifting greys on the ceiling.

_I OPEN_.

And he can't lie there in the silence with that call, alone. He slides off his mattress and sneaks into Number Four's room, where its occupant mutters drowsily at the crack of light at the door. Four doesn't fully wake but he can't go back now, and he curls into a ball on the sheets at the foot of the bed and tries to convince himself, nothing bad can happen here.

Dawn comes.

The new day's scheduled training comes, too; and it marks Father's first tight smile of approval of the week from up in the viewing balcony, as it turns out Ben does in fact, open.

He is healthier this time, and finds to his relief that the vomiting is not an intrinsic part of the experience. It feels like peeling a large bandage off his torso, except that bandage is his skin, and it rips along those predetermined seams. Unpleasant, but not painful—and this piece of control comes so easily it terrifies him. Like he is nothing more than a shell, coating for the pill, designed to disintegrate on delivery of his contents.

* * *

He doesn't question Grace's story for years, until he realizes Pogo has his own firsthand account of the events of Ben's induction into the Academy:

"...and your father had asked that you be cleaned before his arrival, but the nurses were, ah, well."

"Cleaned of what? What nurses?"

"Hm." Pogo tilts his head and rubs his whiskered chin. He sighs. "My apologies, Master Ben, I think we will save that story for another—"

Ben's words catch in his throat as he tugs on Pogo's hand, but Pogo extracts himself gently from Ben's grip. "Another day, Master Ben." He pats his shoulder awkwardly.

* * *

The second piece of control is neither immediate nor easy.

The thing that lives under his skin, he focuses on it and watches in disgusted fascination as it peels his abdomen open, parting his flesh up to the bottom of his breastbone, even though he knows the seam runs the length of his body. He's not sure who's stopping, him or the thing, but he doesn't push to know, anymore.

This part is simple. Closing, too, is simple. But when that thing emerges, that control is not.

Every time, he smells it before he sees it. After he opens, there is always first a brief pause, where he stands hollowed out, empty, smelling of endings, ancient and dying. And then the thing or things start crawling out.

This part he can't watch as closely. It is not just that it is ugly and awful, but that what snakes out of him as a tentacle sometimes flickers into something completely alien or bone at one angle and dripping, naked muscle from another, in a way that breaks the rules of their dimension and hurts his brain to make sense of. He forces himself to look, but even then—is this him?

"Control yourself," Father intones, observing from a distance. Each practice Ben finds himself in rooms filled with miscellaneous colored objects as target practice: hit only the red ones, leave the rest untouched. And each practice Ben opens, nothingness into release into revulsion as he tries to look upon himself. Incorporation and dissonance. He looks away and up at Father, whose face remains impassive.

He fails over and over again. Every weekly session leaves the room a mess of cardboard, wood, metal, nothing left standing; but thankfully there are too many other variables for Father to test, for him to start with that particular failing. And so, begin two years of pushing the limitations of a body, child and human. Two years on the conditions, pushed to extremes, under which he could be trusted to open for horror. Three on the spectrum of shapes and compositions of the eldritch, and the contours of the wills that drive them. Infinite and immeasurable, but hardly so when channeled through Ben, and a will he cannot overcome with his own. Incompatible and separate but Ben numb with fear as the fissure of flesh creeps up his sternum to keep up with the calls from above for "more." The seam holds.

At thirteen, his progress is deemed a failing as a whole. "Your potential should far exceed this, Number Six. Know you are opening a portal to a chthonic dimension." And then, brows furrowing: "You have six months left to either learn restraint, or learn to dream a little bigger."

Six months until their superhero debut. And when there is only one month left after another five of no progress, Father leads him into their regular training room and Ben's knees buckle as he takes in the cages mixed in with the usual display. Little white mice scurry around behind bars, oblivious. Terror as he looks into their beady eyes and realizes, he isn't sure what he had imagined this whole time, of how his powers would be used. How, after everything, he can still amaze even himself with the number of ways he continues to find to be naïve.

"I'm not ready," he babbles, but Father shuts the door and reappears above.

He can wait. And he does, until: he watches it happen, he watches Ben watch life bleed out onto the floor, and Ben watches Father look away first.

On their first mission, Luther orders Ben into the closed bank vault like Father told him to. Klaus's hand is on one shoulder and he offers Ben a shaky smile before Luther's hand on the other pushes him in, and Ben gets a glimpse into the room. He stares at their feet, all pointed towards him, and he doesn't look up.

Ben closes his eyes and hopes for a miracle.

When he opens them: disfigured faces, unrecognizable, matted fur, entrails, it all looks the same, anyway, in the end. He lets out a choked breath and opens the door, before he can hear the moans or spot any last twitches of the unlucky.

Thank god for the mask and everything it hides. He walks down the marble steps of the bank with everyone else, knows he is filthy with blood. He doesn't want this at all.

* * *

Hargreeves in the flesh, again. Seated at a round table and surrounded by Ben's siblings in the tropically-themed lounge area, his face already wearing an expression of slight distaste. Visibly younger, it appears, which makes him seem more human than Ben would have originally guessed. Ben sits in his chair at a neighboring table; and god, he would like to think there is a person-shaped hole in their assembly, but every time one of them accidentally looks right through him, another short laugh threatens to escape between his gritted teeth.

It doesn't require any superhuman ability to see a ghost. All it takes is noticing that empty space and thinking, remembering, something used to be there.

And none of them do. Looking at them now, it seems like everyone's grown up to find homes in other people, rebuilt the Umbrella Academy without him. His fist tightens. And rationally, he knows he should feel relieved that they've found some kind of closure, but he's not. He hates it but he is resentful, repulsively so, envious and terrible and alone.

Nowadays all he and Klaus do is bicker and fight like they are sixteen again. He can't help it—every step Klaus takes towards another rock bottom fills him with fury to a level he didn't think was possible anymore, as a ghost. He's nagging, he's being unhelpful and unsympathetic and he should be able to help it but he can only fixate on the little pieces of himself he's lost, the remaining ones he struggles to keep in order. The overwhelming bitterness of watching Klaus letting go of it all, and Ben fighting for everything he still has left.

And yet, what is left is admittedly an increasingly unrecognizable self. That morning Allison had broken out her nice bottle of liquor to commiserate with the Klaus who had just woken on her kitchen tile, after Ben had just given his lecture on addiction and rock bottoms. He had huffed in exasperation, but he realizes, he would have given anything to have sunk onto the floor with them instead, spiraling in delirious laughter and sharing a sardonic clink of "Cheers!" He is their brother, not keeper; and he was their brother, but in a growing number of ways, not anymore.

He misses them, and they're sitting right in front of him. They couldn't be farther away, and it is with that desperation that he launches himself into Klaus's body.

* * *

When Luther asks Klaus to run reconnaissance for one of his missions, Ben accompanies him to the Argyle Public Library. They climb up the spiraling stairs, meandering through the shelves and lazily circling the newspaper archives until Klaus drops into a vacant seat, empty-handed. He's fairly certain Klaus has no recollection of what he was tasked with researching, and this time, he's not sure either.

The screen flickers rapidly as Klaus shuffles aimlessly from article to article.

"Do they only have local news stored here?"

Klaus rolls his eyes, replies at a volume far too loud, "You think I know?" to immediate hushing from the neighboring aisle.

He smiles wryly—okay, that one's on him. The question was a bit rhetorical, anyway, as he's fairly certain the library won't have any answers to his particular questions. He knows who will.

"Klaus." Ben drums his fingers on the wood of the carrel, soundlessly. "I have a favor to ask."

Thankfully, Klaus finds his request infinitely more compelling than the mission.

"Pogo, I was wondering: do you have any stories about Ben? I've been. Missing him."

Pogo blinks slowly at him. "What kind of stories?"

"Ah, hm. Adoption stories, maybe?"

A pause, pregnant with suspicion. Possibly also with the thought that, _Klaus was supposed to be at the library, no?_

"I see." Pogo squints his eyes at Klaus, but can't seem to conceive any plausible ulterior motives. "Master Ben was adopted in 1989, as were all of you, on an international trip on which I accompanied Sir Reginald. He was born in the outskirts of Daegu, South Korea."

"Interesting, interesting." Klaus finds a priceless vase in the living room to lean on. "Tell me more."

"Master Klaus, it would help if you were more specific about what you wish to know."

"Well." Ben sits on the sofa arm with bated breath, as Klaus makes his plea. "Before Ben died, he told me his last wish was to know _all_ about the story of his adoption. The juicy, gory details, Pogo, all of it. And, you know, it's been months and sometimes I think I might still hear him fluttering around, and I just think—it might be nice to put his soul to rest, you know? Be a good brother, get his affairs in order." He smiles wide and waves a hand with nonchalance.

Ben buries his face in his hands.

There is yet another uncomfortable silence as Pogo stands very still for a long moment, and Ben thinks maybe this is his cue to disappear. Then: "Very well."

"Master Ben was, ah, a bit of a special case." He adjusts his cane, wrapping both his hands over the knobbed handle, then fixes Klaus with a measured stare. "He was our final stop, after Miss Vanya. Sir Reginald had already arranged for the transportation of you and your siblings to the Umbrella Academy, and we traveled from the Gimpo airport to the residence of Master Ben's mother."

"We were, I believe, on time—but your father had made our arrangements based upon the assumption that you all would not be manifesting your powers until your later years."

A ringing starts in Ben's ears. "It was a rather unfortunate scenario, but your father managed to contact the appropriate authorities to determine if your brother had survived the incident, and then where he had been sent. When we arrived at the orphanage, your father had only barely managed to sort out all the required paperwork beforehand, but the, ah, circumstances of your brother's arrival expedited the process greatly."

"Sir Reginald carried him with care on the return trip, and your brother fared quite well after that. I believe your father did procure copies of the police reports to—"

"Research purposes, of course."

"—investigate the event himself." At Klaus's interjection, Pogo stops his account. "Does that help, Master Klaus?"

"Yes, Pogo, thank you," answers Klaus, stretching out each word. He thinks for a second. "Thank you so much. But, 'cleaned of what?'" He spreads his arms and raises his eyebrows expectantly, as his eyes dart to Ben. "And something about nurses, I think, too? Whatever baby Ben was up to."

Pogo stiffens. And Ben, Ben doesn't want to hear it. He has already been answered, not in as many words, and it will only hurt more to hear it plainly. He already knows.

"Ah. I assume you are referring to the nurses working at the orphanage." Behind the miniature spectacles, Pogo's eyes are somber. "I do remember Master Ben previously inquiring about them."

"There was not enough concrete evidence to support much of any theory on what had occurred. But somehow, the workers at the orphanage had heard that the crime scene had been reported by a neighbor, who had called after hearing screaming and something, ah, I believe 'monstrous' was their misguided word of choice."

Pogo raises his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "Local superstition was unfortunately powerful enough to cause them to neglect your brother's hygiene and care when he was first sent to their facilities. But he was of course, tended to immediately under Sir Reginald's guardianship."

A low whistle. An unreadable Klaus casually regards Pogo, who holds his gaze without faltering. Then, firmly: "Her body was not found. The worst is unlikely."

He can picture it—no, he can remember it. He has so many such memories now, identical. Red, red, it must have been red, vicious splatters and ugly gashes and sticky pools seeping into the carpet.

The first time it happened, it had been by accident.

* * *

The last time it happened, well.

He's lined up his memories like dominoes, and as they fall piece by piece, his last moments trickle through his conscious.

That seam. The center cannot hold.

Nothing like a very real death counter to teach him restraint—and it had still taken months, but now he didn't need to do his killing in his cage, didn't have to do his killing at all. Free, out in open air, he felt through the tentacles like any other of his human appendages, and felt it when he squeezed hard enough to make a _pop_. And he didn't, mostly, as much as he could. He hoped it was enough; and when it wasn't, there was always the domino mask and the itch beneath his skin that whispered reassurances to him of his nature, inescapable. The nervous whispers of those around him that agreed, and the both of them haunting his dreams.

Every mission is the same script, different player of the week, and his last mission had seemed no different. Unless maybe Diego had stepped on more of Luther's toes than usual, or Allison had already begun spending more of her time on finding her way out. Maybe Klaus and Ben had dragged their feet into being one step too far behind everyone else, or their third year without Five was to be the one to finally break them. Or maybe it had been impossible from the start, too big a jump between their last accomplishment and Hargreeves's obsession with saving the world.

Either way: they are five children funneled down a hallway that balloons out into a final room with a singular exit. The numbers are hopelessly against them, but they always make it out by the skin of their teeth anyway; and with the arrogance of teenage invincibility, Luther calls for a tactical last stand in the mouth of the corridor bottleneck.

They shouldn't have argued, but they do, half cutting down the enemy as they enter and half beating a retreat across the room. In panic, the familiar crunch of bone in Ben's grip, like crushed exoskeleton and bug guts wet in his hands. The _shhtk shhtk shhtk_ of his limbs unfurling and curling in on themselves and the patter of their steps towards the door as he follows and absorbs the barrage of rounds into tentacles more night than matter.

He is the last to reach the door and he turns to look back.

His fault. Blade cuts across the front of his torso and he bleeds pitch and Diego reaches for his hand the same instant Ben tries to close himself and squeeze through, but he can't. A strangled cry that is his or the unfortunate owner of the knife now disintegrating into rogue limbs that Ben can't feel can't control can't seal can't close over the cut limbs that reach back towards Diego—

He slams the door closed.

Gasping breaths as the black continues to spill out from him, threatening to empty him entirely. He can feel every _pop_ now, at a pace hungry and frenzied and it's not him, probably. A cacophony of smell and sound and sight and he is so dizzy he slumps against the door to watch that little seam grow visible on his skin, an angry slash that eats its path up his ribcage. Fast, too fast.

The horrors, his insides, they are coming loose. He woozily moves a hand to the wound and it comes away a shredded mess.

Oh.

Somehow, it's only then that he knows with bone-deep certainty that there will be no escape. Not whole.

Fear, horror, fear, it drains out with everything else. And he can feel it underneath, had always wondered what would happen if he pulled all the way, on that seam—if there would be any coming back.

No more resisting. He pulls: and his world turns inside out.

* * *

(If there had been any pain, he has forgotten.)

* * *

Above, every room in this mansion in which they grew up echoes, reverberating with past insult and injury. But bellow, the watery blue swallows all sound but his words, which billow out to fill the space between the walls.

"You aren't a monster. You're my sister," he says. And those words are true; they have to be. "You aren't alone at the table anymore, Vanya."

Everyone dreams of warmth on a cold night. He holds her hands in his, and they are so, so cold. Vanya's eyes well with tears, and he blinks rapidly. He has no warmth to offer, he thinks: but how long had the two of them been made invisible and untouchable? He wraps his fingers tighter around her as he tries to find his next sentence.

Vanya worms her way out of his grip and grasps at the sleeves of his jacket. He shivers.

Not a monster, he thinks—he hopes.

He's falling apart, dissolving in her hands. He can't tell if it is peace or void that is claiming him. "Can you hug me as I go?"

For one more moment, he is held together; and in Vanya's tight embrace, a final, tiny spark of fear is extinguished. Into her ear, he breathes his goodbye.

He used to be things, and now he isn't. And it's a relief.

_no, i'm not afraid to disappear,  
the billboard said the end is near.  
i turned around, there was nothing there—  
yeah, i guess the end is here._  
  
**I KNOW THE END**

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from "i will light you on fire" by the golden shoulders (the blue basement being the metaphorical "sea" in question.... lmao), quote in the summary and in briefly in the fic is from "the second coming" by w.b. yeats, and the opening and closing quotes from, as referenced above, "i know the end" by phoebe bridgers.
> 
> apologies if stating the obvious! but for attribution completeness: the quote from vanya’s book is from the comics, and the other line in italics in that second passage is the inscription on ben’s grave (shown on the netflix show). and, not quoted directly but also from the comics, reginald once notes about ben, “gruesome but fascinating… must learn to suppress my nausea in order to study further.” a huge ouch. the union between being invisible as a ghost and also others not wanting to look at him as a living boy.
> 
> thank you for reading!!! feel free to find me (and a [much more rambly author's note](https://aureliansgalley.tumblr.com/post/633281860509859840/sometimes-u-have-extended-thoughts-about-your-own)) at [my tumblr](https://aureliansgalley.tumblr.com/).


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